This disclosure relates to the field of computer systems. More particularly, a system, method, and apparatus are provided for operating a transparent hybrid data storage scheme comprising multiple types of storage components, such as one or more SSDs (Solid State Drives/Disks/Devices) and one or more HDDs (Hard Disk Drives).
SSDs and HDDs each have advantages and disadvantages relative to each other. For example, SSDs offer faster access times and throughput, and greater bandwidth, but are more expensive in terms of a given unit of storage (e.g., megabyte, gigabyte), and will fail after some number of write operations.
Existing data storage schemes that feature both SSDs and HDDs tend to simply use the SSDs as temporary caches for data stored permanently on the HDDs. Instead of offering a total amount of data storage equal to the combined capacities of the SSDs and the HDDs, the capacity of such a scheme is determined by the capacity of the HDD(s). Also, because every access to the data storage scheme is via the SSDs, the throughput of the system is limited to that of the SSDs and the SSDs tend to wear out relatively quickly.
Some proprietary data storage schemes have been developed, but require commitment to the vendors' hardware and software platforms. These schemes typically work with an SSD or HDD at a disk-volume level or a disk-block level, and simply allocate individual files to a given disk or device based on some algorithm that users/operators cannot adjust or affect.